Artistic Vigilante recently caught up with fantasy art &digital artist;Reflection design to talk about her photography and her career.
Artistic Vigilante – What is your full name and how long have you been shooting for?
Reflection Design – My name is Magdalena Bednarek and I work as a freelanced Digital Artist since 10/2012.
Artistic Vigilante – Your photography is majorly based on fantasy, can you tell us about your inspirations and how it came to be that way?
Reflection Design – I got inspiration from music, movies, poems and other artist, mainly historical artists like Van Gogh or Da Vinci or Monet. I’m into comics and drawing since childhood, I used to paint and draw since ever- before I even walked J So being creative with lots of fantasy is kind of in my veins.
Artistic Vigilante – Its obvious you pay attention to the details and you are very deliberate with your art, it looks expensive! How do you fund your photography?
Reflection Design – After studying Design I worked in regular jobs all the time. Since over a year I work as an Office Manager and do Marketing in a Startup Company in Essen/Germany.
Artistic Vigilante – You have a lot of fans who want to know how you create your magic, some of your works have backgrounds that seem digitally altered, and can you explain step by step how you did the editing for these pieces. Including sources for overlays if any.
Reflection Design – It would be too long to explain everything. Mostly I got some landscape pictures, taken by me or from freesharing sites, like deviantart or pixabay.
The main thing, I would say, is the composition of all elements. They have to fit, so I´m always looking for similar lighting, great quality if I have to scale something. If the quality is worse, I blur it out, to add more dimension. Flying objects like sparks or petals, leafs etc are always included – that´s my way adding motion and atmosphere into my artworks.
The absolute mainthing is the color. In my opinion the picture starts living with the right colorplay.
Contrasts are my thing. And I love to darken my pictures, to add some melancholy into it. Other focus points can stand out brighter that way, so that’s all the magic.
Of Course I do some digital painting as well.
Artistic Vigilante – What is it like being a female photographer in Germany?
Reflection Design – I don’t see myself as a Photographer “only” – I´m an artist. I do so much more, and for me, my artworks are no longer photos at some point- they are living and expressive and telling stories.
But going back to your question: I think its great to work creatively. In Germany we have got so many possibilities to work free and build up own companies. I feel free and proud.
Artistic Vigilante – What are your challenges as a photographer?
Reflection Design -Challenges are at some point being creative and delivering new stuff all the time, to entertain the crowd. There are so many other great artists.
I don’t see myself that competitive , bc mostly I do art because its my oxygen for me J I need it in my life. I don’t focus mostly on others, I look after me an just do, what I like.
I think this is a good way to stay alive in this business.
Artistic Vigilante – Do you have any advice for young photographers following in your footsteps? (you have a lot of fans)
Reflection Design – Find your talent, use your talent, practice practice practice…for real!
I did sooo many shootings, experiments with lights & textures, watched tutorials for different topics to find out what do I want to do, mixed colors together to create contrasts, analysed what makes a picture catchy and what are the focus points, till I reached the here and now.
Just be patient, get inspired but always follow your guts.
Artistic Vigilante – What steps are you taking to make sure more and more people discover your work?
Reflection Design – Constantly uploading is one thing. I need to be more present online and do interactive stuff, maybe live videos at shootings or my crafting. I´m not that into events or meetings, so there could be more people discovering my art, for sure, if I would spend more time on social media.
Thank you for taking time out with us.